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An authoritative exposé of the mysterious and potentially dangerous world of private equity. Marquee private equity firms such as Blackstone Group, Carlyle Group, and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts have grown bigger and more powerful than ever. They have also become the nation's largest employers through the businesses they own. Journalist Josh Kosman explores private equity's explosive growth and shows how its barons wring profits at the expense of the long-term health of their companies. He argues that excessive debt and mismanagement will likely trigger another economic meltdown within the next five years, wiping out up to two million jobs. He also explores the links between the private equity elite and Washington power players, who have helped them escape government scrutiny. The result is a timely book with an important warning for us all.
I regard this as an extraordinarily important book that should be widely read and widely discussed. It would have been particularly important for this to have occurred prior to the recent presidential election. Reading this book importantly informed me about socio-economic (and hence political) issues that I only poorly understood before reading the book, but the book had a great and important clarifying impact upon me. All the talk about "job creators" and the job-creating effect of hedge funds came through in an altogether different light as a result of reading this book. I urged C-span to feature the author on one of their interviews, but to my knowledge that never happened, nor did the book receive the attention it deserves in main-stream media, or, for that matter, in the alternative media. I am not enough of any economist to comment upon the author's contention that the extensive buyouts of hedge fund companies will bring down our economy. For me, the important part of this book - and it was very important - lay in elucidating what hedge funds are, how they operate, and the effects they often have upon workers, their retirement pensions and health benefit programs, and indeed the fate of the taken-over companies themselves. Few things are more central to our thinking about the nation's economy, and the tie-in with political choices we are presented with. This book is the antidote - and a very powerful antidote - to much of the "spin" put forth during the recent presidential campaign. This book deserves much more widespread attention then it appears to have received. I rate it as one of the more important books I have read in recent times.